Gurgaon : An Egalitarians Wet Dream

  Gurgaon is an egalitarians wet dream. There is so much equality. No matter what sized person you are, male or female, whatever economic strata you are from and whoever your biological or otherwise father is, no one here can be bullied and everyone is bullied. Kalu, my shady blanket clad rickshaw wallah for the first week literally popped his neck out to abuse everyone alike without discrimination. From Audi's to pedestrians, no one was spared. The other day, a car nudged a Gol Gappa Laari, and almost nonchalantly the Laari walla demanded the car owner to come out. Very lazily, as if it was a day to day thing for him. A simple lazy causal prelude is all that the lanky Gol Gappa man worded, ' I don't care who you are, call anyone you want, but you aren't going anywhere. Come out'.  Chill.

It has been two weeks here. All I have seen about Gurgaon is more or less summed up in the first paragraph. Gigantic buildings? Yes and meh. You had a lot of concrete and you put it all together. I really don't hold any likings to that. I am sure there are similar malls for indulgence and opulence. Meh again.

What stuck me from the terrace of my work place though is worth mentioning. Disclaimer, after passing through all the huge ass buildings on my first day I learned my office building was away from the highschool cool kids table. But I could see them from my terrace eating and giggling on their inside jokes with their perfect smiles and bodies. I remember going up to the terrace on the first few days trying to comprehend the change and adjusting to it. It used to be very foggy and cold back then which I really miss now. I could see one of those mammoth DLF buildings vaguely from my terrace. But what stuck me the most was the glaring red light banner they had on top of the building and how it diffused through the fog painting a shabby picture. The red banner blinked, and loaded from left to write and did some other effects none too visible through the mist. But it was programmed to be sequential and repetitive. Sipping tea while shivering to the cold and staring at the banner surrounded by the cacophony of horns in an instance reminded me of  Bladerunner's set. Huge buildings, a lot of people and the neon lights. To be honest I wasn't really happy the first two days, which changed later on. But this scene added to the dystopic lens with which I saw Gurgaon.

The Red Banner

To add to that, when walking back to home there comes this patch of road where there are no streetlights. So when walking back, against the flow of traffic you see a lot of silhouettes walking the same road in either of the directions. Each person visible only temporarily, a dark silhouette all the time, with only its dark solidity increasing with the approaching yellow headlight. And then in the moment of maximum proximity, the silhouette solid as ever, still black, almost as if glowing in the yellow aura of the headlight vanishes until another car passes by. Watching each one of them going through this cycle for the 5 minutes depressed me. Each one of  us just a shadow in hurry to get home. Now it is different, I relish the walk back home. I like that part of the walk. It is a release from the noise and lights. For me the visual is going to be something I will never forget.

Another thing which amazes me about Gurgaon is the cars. Not not the fancy models and the hooha. But the traffic sense. Coming from Gujarat and especially after 4 years in Gandhinagar, walking in Gurgaon is hazardous to life. If you survive you first day, just look up and thank your guardian angels. It took me a couple of near-death encounters to realize that I cannot walk the way I always walked. You cannot walk in your own world or at your own pace. And trust me on this one, if you are new to this place stick to the sides. The extreme sides. Crawl on them like spiders. Another protip, don't get lost in your own world especially if you decide to listen to music while walking back. Reminisce those memories later on or become a memory yourself. You decide. Don't assume that the cars will stop for you. You see, the number of pedestrians on the road is way greater than the cars. You are an abundant resource. Don't for a second assume that the car will stop for you if you start crossing and pretend to not look in the cars direction. Just don't. I am grateful, I wasn't hit this once. My mind's prediction model is trained on Gandhinagar traffic. Trying to use the same model to predict a car's behavior while crossing almost turned fatal for me.

Be anyone you want, but not this red car's driver

One thing good about Gurgaon is, that they put their SUVs to use instead of just buy bigs cars for the sake of them being big. They test those cars.
For example, the other day I was walking back home when all of sudden a Sumo instead of taking a U-turn from the intersection ahead, just rode over the divider. It almost seemed like an impulsive Fuck this I am not waiting decision. Sumo going slowly, la la la, sounds of screeches and brakes and suddenly the Sumo is on the other side of the road. Imagine driving on the other road. Thank god I am not. I have to wait till my brain models all these anomalies. And no, this didnt happen just once. I saw it again a few days later.

Divider? Plish-Plosh.

More about Gurgaon later, if I am still alive.
 

On Puppies, Kittens, Pandas and a 24 Hour Code Sprint Which Led to Awwsome, an Android App.

In the IT industry, "I have an idea, I am going to make an App about it" is similar to "I have an idea, I am going to write a book about it" for the rest of the world (Maybe not the whole world, but I couldn't find the right category).
Now, I have both those things on my bucketlist. And finally after a 24 hour coding marathon, one of them has been checked.

Download Awwsome on your Android.

The Story Behind Awwsome.
I have been visiting reddit quite often since the past few months. One of my favourite subreddits is r/aww. People post images of their pets, put catchy titles and all. It makes you go aww, legit.

Some of the pics are too awwdorable (pardon me). I often end up e-mailing them to people close to me, probably in the form of good morning messages. Them pups are ought to give a good jumpy start to the day. Instant mood lifters whenever you are feeling low.

That's what sparked the idea. An instant mood lifter. Awwsome is an android app which greets you with images of kittens, pups, squirrels, hedgehogs and everything nice on your phone. Plus, sharing with your closed ones is just a button press. Simple.

Download on Play Store.

So one night before going to sleep, I quickly drew on a paper the basic interface and jotted down the functionalities promising myself to work on it tomorrow. As I had mentioned earlier, I really wanted to make the most of these vacations.

Next morning, enter Panda aka Shantanu Jain. Panda is like this one stop android guru. On a normal day, he is always tinkering one thing or the other. He already has 5 apps to his name I think.  He is a proper machedu. And I am not going to plug an english translation to that. He is a machedu.

We decided to give ourselves a 24 hour deadline to finish this application and have it published on the Play store.


It was about 12:30 PM when we started. Both of us sitting in one corner of the rc.
We weren't going to host the images or the database on the clients app and instead put it up on server online. I was in-charge of that. A python based script to collect the content,  an online service to communicate with the application and the database which would hold all the content.
Panda was supposed to make Android part and its client side functionalities.

About 30 minutes later, Panda and other friends decided to watch Heropanti. After watching Xpose its been downhill for us. All of us our experimenting with such movies, for research purposes ofcourse. After Xpose, Main Tera Hero and Yamla Pagla Deewana 2, I realized I was about to cross the point of no return and stopped myself. Treated myself to Highway and came back to senses. But friends went ahead and watched Gunda and now Heropanti.

Anyway, so Panda left. I was left alone in the very same corner. I kept working on the data collection script and was done in an hour or so. The main barrier was to put that data up on appengine. There were 1000+ entries to be made. For uploading bulk data on appengine, they have this functionality called the bulkloader, but it didn't have enough documentation and SO didnt answer much.

I ignored that method, and tried thinking of some Jugaad. By 6 PM nothing moved and I decided to chuck it and play some football. I decided to resume work post dinner, by that time Panda would have also recovered from the movie.

Post Dinner I decided to ignore the jugaad and attack the problem through the proper way, trying to follow each step of the bulkloader method. Again by 2 AM nothing moved and I decided to give up that method.

I figured out another way in which I converted the csv as a txt and uploaded it. Used the interactive consolve to urlfetch the file, pass it through the python csv module and use each to row to fill the database. It worked. Such a relief.

After that I finished the service and added the random picture functionality. It was a breeze. My work was done.

Panda was still working on the app, the feature to share photos with friends wasn't working as expected. But a machedu he is, he got it figured out. A lot was left on his side, admob, favourites, client database etc.

Now, I don't code in Java. The last I coded in Java was in my second semester. Since then it has always been Python for me. Even my GSoC project is in Python.
I was pretty jobless, and hence started working on the write-up for the store, different promotional banners, twitter profile, facebook page, logo and the name.

We were supposed to do everything in those 24 hours.


We were pretty confused about the name. From the very beginning it was supposed to be DailyCute which would pave the path for such similarly themed apps by us in future. Sometime during the night, I thought Awwsome was a pretty rad name. But the very fact I could hardly find anything named on the internet made my doubt myself. Was it too shitty? How come nobody uses it? Must be shitty.

Anyway, after a lot of deliberating, we decided it would be Awwsome. We were making, coding, publishing Awwsome. See? Its such an awesome name. Hmm. Maybe.

By 8 AM in the morning I was done. With everything. Twitter. Facebook. Banners. Everything.

Panda was still coding the app. I wish I could help him. I was feeling pretty bad.

By 11:30 AM. Everything was done. We were testing it, adding small features and everything. Panda made the apk and uploaded it and went to the next bed and dozed off. I was supposed to fill in the write ups, screenshots and the various forms required  before publishing the app. We released the app in beta. It takes a fews hours before it goes live, and I decided to sleep as well.

I woke up at around 6 PM. Panda was already up. He couldn't sleep in the heat. He was already making minor changes and was ready to make the app live for everyone. He is such a workaholic. We made it live. Now Google takes a few hours to make it available. Soon, Awwsome was live :)

24 hours of coding, some dalwaddein, tons of images of puppies and kittens later, Awwsome was born. Published and live in the Play Store.

It is a very good feeling. It is exciting. Its an amazing feeling everytime some code you've written interacts with the world. Many people have absolutely loved the idea and the product.

What happens now?
The excitement dies slowly. Because its tough to get your word out there. Its tough to market. Its tough being shameless. I feel a little bit odd plugging the app in every conversation. But I know it is something good and it is worth it. I have to accept that marketing requires effort. A lot. I know if people would just download it once, they will like it. And I am not even taking credit for it, how can one not like puppies? Are you even human?

Well, if you like the idea, please give it a go :) It will definitely make you smile. Pakka. Promise.

How you can help us?
Download on Play Store. Rate and Review!(FYI. You can download an app in your phone from your laptop too. Open the Play Store Now.)

Like Awwsome on Facebook. We post aww images.

Follow @AwwsomeApp us on Twitter.

Spread the word, it will mean the world to us. Every download equals one tummy rub to us some puppy. Do it because one of the developer is named Panda. Ok? No? Hmm.

So anyway, if you have an idea for an app, just go for it, set a deadline for yourself, or best do a 24 hour coding marathon. It is tiring, but extremely satisfying. This blogpost itself is part of a daily one hour writing sprint. Now, I need to work on the second point on the bucketlist :)

Complete Guide To Summer Breaks In College.

What college students should do this summer vacations?

How to make sure you spend your summers in college effectively. A few things a college student could do during his/her summer break and how not to waste it away?

Okay. So your summer break is about to start or it has started already. You are really excited to do things. All those pre-exam bucketlists and amazing ideas you had night before the exam or even during the exams. It is time for them.

If you are in your first year, chances are that you are going to waste this summer. Most people do, and yes most people were as excited about it as you are right now. But they wasted it. Its too easy to do so. With the summer heat, the comfort of your home and newly acquired bundle of series and movies which are instant answers to your 'I am getting bored'. Don't let it be a summer in which you finish oh so many seasons and movies and did nothing else. At least don't let it be just that.

On College and Drawing Your Masterpiece Right

Small things trigger back nostalgia . It can be a good feeling or a bad feeling. The one I am talking about triggered guilt. Not that I did something bad back then, its about how i am now with respect to that time. I am talking about my first few days in college. The excitement, fear, drama, the feeling, being alone and independent. Every moment was so exciting. And it wouldn’t be exaggeration branding them magical.

The person I was then and the person I am now are miles apart. In my case, I am sure the former looks down upon the later. Are you really what you planned yourself to be?

Comic : What is Discreet Maths?

The truth about Discrete Discreet Maths.

It is exam time, and I am really bored.

This is my second comic, the first one was about placement sessions and their irony in college.

I have a different story for this one, but decided to stick to this. Will probably draw the other one post exam. It did seem funny in my head.

If you like it, please comment and click here to subscribe. Posts get sent to your mailbox. Technology. Please. It gets lonely at times :'|

Also, shhhhhh.

Here it is.

She is such a buzzkill.

So just after I posted the last post, this happened.

So anyway, that is Chinar. She is a thing. If you are from my college, you already know her. If not, you really need to know her.

Dejected

Tired from the world, he sought refuge.

Kept running from the invisible, gaining altitude while climbing a spiral staircase.
 
He knew once up there, everything would be fine.

One look at the stars, and he would turn invincible.

All his problems would disappear.

He paced. Faster and faster. Giving it his all, burning away all his energy, he jumped.

Jumped into the opening.

Only to find the sky clouded.

http://rebeccabarray.com/tag/stars/

Ps : Wrote this for a flash fiction thread on Reddit. Partly inspired from real life.

On Olay, Olay :D

So, I have a Coding Theory assignment and an OS code left to be done. But that can all wait.

Usual summer afternoons are completely unbearable. Waking up in sweat, looking up in despair only to find a cob web ridden ceiling, and the most worthless fan ever working at half its capacity. But today, I woke up at 5 to find a completely pleasant weather outside. Not the stark unforgiving blue, but something more pleasant. I figured I must have checked the time wrong, unable to think straight. Anyway, it was 5 PM and it was super cloudy. Tea and biscuits were had and I headed to the library, controlling my urge to go to CEP terrace. I felt like a Labrador :| Waiting for rains. Completely excited. A spring in my step. More like, "Its going to happen, yes it going to happen." 
The clouds were playing out different shades of yellow and grey, just when the sun was singing its swansong and winds were picking up speed. The stage was set.


It rained :D or rather hailed. Chaos. It became super windy! Trees started getting uprooted. You could hear the rain and all its entourage. Making a scene. It was amazing. With the winds blowing at your face at such speeds, washing your face with all the rain, ah :) Bliss.

Here is a video, a friend took from outside his room.

Of the many things that are awesome about Daiict, the one thing is, you keep falling in love with her again and again. You'll hate her at times, become indifferent to her, and then she plays her cards, carefully waiting for the right moments. You vixen! When it rains for the first time on campus, you fall hard of it. Its almost magical the way the campus transforms. The orange street lights and the fluorescent ones. Such high winds, with water vapours dancing away from one light to another, orange to fluorescent. Almost enjoying the spotlight, afraid to come to the ground and call it a night. Your minutes of fame.

Thanks for the photos Anuj, and mailing them as "Gujju Snowfall"

And then it hailed. Hailed in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Tried picking up a hailfight, but eh. Failed.

Anyway, I am like really happy right now. And if you pass by me right now in library and give me a smile, I will give you a damn big grin with gleaming eyes, creep you out. Possibly ending our communication for the rest of the time I am still in college.

Life seems really clean and simple. Life is good. One of the best weekends of this semester for multiple reasons :)

On Placement Sessions, Personal Interviews and Irony.

Today was an institute holiday (Good Friday), but we were supposed to attend a session by one of the premier coaching institutes about writing our resumes and on giving good PI's. Even though the initiative meant well, I couldn't stop myself from being cynical about the presentation being given. Maybe, because it took the good out of my Friday morning.

I ended up doodling about it in my notebook. Here is the digital version. The irony was too high in this one.




















Also, this.

Ps. If you are offended by this, well. A good sense of humor is a must for getting selected into these premier institutes. Trust me. I know. A random-number-assume-any % of people who have had a good sense of humor got into IIM-A.

Ps. Any resemblance to any person or company in real is completely coincidental. I may have imagined about all this, um the sleeping guy in the pic.

Ps. Used the above disclaimer for the first time in my life. *excited*

Comment :)

On Why I Started Hating My Blog

So, I haven't really been honest with my blog lately. The last post hit it off on Reddit and got me a lot of views and I think that killed it for me. The blog wasn't personal anymore. To be honest, yes the last piece was humorous, but it wasn't me.I don't mind something going mildly famous, but then it has to be something which I really feel for, not a post I ranted out in an hour over some ants.

The blog probably felt like writing for CoolAge all over again. I started writing for CoolAge in my first year of college, but could never reach the minimum amount of articles to redeem payment. And you could count that threshold with your fingers. I was one or two articles short when I finally decided to ditch it. It was more like a report writing job. Write a 400-500 long (long?) article, and get easy money. Had it been freelancing or something I would have still done it. But that writing represented me. I remember what tripped the switch. I sent an introspective article about a change in sleeping patterns I experimented with during one particular set of exams. Sleeping through the day, reading all night in peace, having crisp Mendu Vada's in the morning, and then going to sleep again, evading the noise and confusion of everyday life. It was peaceful. I didn't do it for a day or two, but almost a fortnight. There was a lot of introspection, I will try to find the article again. Anyway, CoolAge rejected it saying, it was too personal. What?! I edited it a little and sent it back, getting the same reply. And I decided to stop writing. I wasn't going to do something I don't like just for the sake of money. Especially, not before I graduate atleast when money isn't a constraint. For me writing is essentially spilling out of my heart. I don't know fancy words, I usually don't go out of line to think of smart puns or anything, I try to write exactly what comes to mind. Its an outlet to the thoughts I have usually, and not thoughts that were cultivated just for the sake of the writing exercise. I am not sure if I am making sense.

Fuck, that was some detour. I was planning on a really short post.




The personal feeling and vibe this blog had for me walked away with the publishing of the ant post, dejected, walking away sadly, teary eyed, contemplating whether it should look back or not. 

Not that I haven't been writing, I am still working on the the Ladakh memoir, and I am proud of what it is turning into. By the end of this summer it will be done. Hopefully. Or it will be too late, and then it would turn into fiction.

Other than that, I was recently reminded of the pleasure of spilling out everything, like no censors, everything, not giving a flying f' about the world writing, by a pair of letters I exchanged with a friend. And here I am on my blog again.

Weeeeeeeeeeeee are getting back together. (Sing it like the Taylor Swift song, but like an outro, okay?)

Complete Guide to Cheer Up a Little When Your Laptop is Infested by Ants.

I woke up this morning only to get a miny heart attack when I saw tiny ants crawling out of my keyboard. Like most of us, my laptop is my most precious asset and I am not going to let any critter call it as its home. Damnit, its not my hostel room, in which till recently we were amicably in agreement with the spiders about their property and ours. They mind their business and we mind ours. Such peace. I am sure foreign diplomats could learn from us. But that changed a few days back. More about it later.

So yes, you don't mess with my Laptop. I was pretty pissed. So started firing away Google searches on 'Ants crawling out of my laptop' and that kind. To my surprise I came across some pretty funny answers, a creepy BBC documentary which talks about why ants love electronics but bees hate electronics and an ingenious solution to the problem!

Instead of being panicky, why not cheer up a little?

What do you get when you mix The IT Crowd and some good Web Design advice?

What do you get when you mix Moss from IT Crowd and some really strong web design advice?

A mother flipping laugh and some good learning! I laughed a lot in my head, I am sure you will too.

If you do front end development, you have to read this advice! Don't miss it. Especially if you've just started, this will help you from taking the wrong path ahead.

Diwali Break in Retrospection and Rants about the 'Rich' and the 'Founders'

How my Diwali bucket list failed miserably and rants about the Pot Bellied Rich and for-the-heck-of-it Startup Founders.
So I had planned to do so many things in the 10 day break I had.



Well this is the 8th day and I am going to look back on how much I have accomplished.

First, the grandiose plans that were made:

1. Complete these three books:
   
   • The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar (Read!)
   • Dear Life by Alex Munroe
   • Think Everest: Scaling Mountains with the Mind
2. Resume writing about the trip to Ladakh
3. Start studying for the end semesters, because c'mon I don't even precisely remember the last time I went to the LT.
4. Work on the GCDC project.
5. Finish the dbms submission(Yeah right!)

So much right? The things we think we'll do and the things we actually do. The difference is wider than the gaping expression you had after the Red Wedding episode in GoT.

The percentage I completed?
26.6%
Wait the percentage does sound high. Misleading.

I worked on the GCDC project and completed one of the books. Yay me!

-About the book:
How is the book, The Monk and the Riddle?
I really enjoyed reading it. It starts a little slow but by the end it is really gripping. You can call it as an self help book for people who want to find their calling in life. But it really concentrates on start-ups and gives the inside story of the Silicon Valley culture. It's not about how you should manage a business or write a business plan or anything. Please. It's not that. It's more about asking yourself why you want to do it? It talks about how we keep postponing what we really want to do in life and instead do things which we think are the responsible things to do. It's about the deferred life plan. The one which you follow instead of the whole life plan. The writer is really passionate about the topic and speaks his heart out. I really recommend this book, check it out.

<rant>
Common Start Up Stupidity
I find a lot of people caught with the start up craze. I am sure you have too, especially if you are in an engineering college. I am not saying it is bad. It is bad when you are doing it just for the heck of it. With no originality what so ever. Doing something which is already being done. Nothing new. Bleh. But that is my personal opinion. Shouldn't getting something new to people, adding some really cool features to an existing concept, filling the gaps or changing lives be your aim? By doing something already being done with no substantial change whatsoever you are not really adding value to anyones life. Is it a new better way of doing something which is already being done? Foremost, do you really feel for the idea? I am not blaming you if making money is your only aim, but I hope you don't. If you are one of these people, please read The Monk and the Riddle. Please? Don't get me wrong, I am totally in for the independence and all the entrepreneurial spirit and all that but not for soulless-cash-making-oh-I-am-so-cool-founder shit. If you are not passionate about it you are going to lose your interest as quickly as you finished making the facebook page of your startup.
</rant>


Oh I have a few more rants.
<rant>
Super Rich Pot Bellied People
Diwali means meeting a lot of people and going to parties and community gatherings. Well most of them are infected with people that I have had the opportunity to inspect closely while sitting quietly in the corner eating the buffet dinners. Not that its hard to spot them, unless you are them. Super rich pot bellied people. Super rich people who wear shiny clothes, spit out of cars, buy expensive phones and flaunt them by clicking pictures of people they usually don't talk to, also take centuries to click that photo.
 The moment they open their mouth, all that they've earned drops out like coins from slot machines with the displeasing metallic clanking sound matching their ill worded mouths tone.
</rant>

Disclaimer: I could have thought more critically about this subject, but heck I just want to write whatever comes to my mind. Blog v2.00 remember?

Hmm, I shall limit my randomness.



I will finish the other two books by the end of this semester, which means 20 days. I will completely ignore the fact that it took my a month to complete Lolita with my 2 pages per day before bedtime routine. Also that I have my end semester exams starting soon and its only 12 days to my GCDC submission.

A place to note down and over optimism, the two prerequisites of making bucket lists.

Anyway, the second thing.

-Resume writing about Ladakh. 

Well that couldn't happen but I am planning to dedicate entire tomorrow to this. It's all about getting into the zone. Once I am in the zone with the right amount of nostalgia, enough to make me excited but not that much that'll render me dreamy and leave me feeling frustrated about not being able to go back in the near future.

-Start studying for end semesters? . . . .
Bleh.




-Work on the GCDC project?
Oh btw, GCDC is Google Cloud Developer Challenge.
It is going really well. More about it in a different post. But it is almost done. We just need to plug the backend and then frontend together and work on the interface. All major backend problems have been solved.

-Finish the DBMS lab submission.
Well it is almost done. We were asked to make a dbms for a project management software. Completely from scratch. From the SRS (Software Requirement Specs) to the implementation in PostgreSQL.

Well I was recently working on populating the database with fictional data using a Python script. It really was a no-brainer but it was fun randomizing the data and making sure the foreign keys weren't violated.

Well, that is it.

Happy New Year and Happy Diwali :)

Comment about your Diwali break bucket lists and what all you did :)

Off to Oasis ' 13 : The songs we are performing in BITS-Pilani

I am just dropping in for a quick post because that is what I promised in an earlier post. All my enthusiasm to post about every single thing turned out to be ephemeral like almost every other ambition I have these days. Ephemeral. Ahh, this word wiil never leave me. The irony.

I am leaving for BITS-Pilani's cultural fest tomorrow. We were supposed to go to IIT-Kanpur's fest but things got messy and our college's music club didn't get accommodation there.

Well I am not really excited about the Pro night because it is going to be Farhan Akhtar. I am mainly excited about the Suicide at Midnight event. You are supposedly taken to a dark room at midnight duh with candles etc and made to write your own suicide note. This time they are also going to make us write a will. Other than that I've heard that they have 3 v 3 football on a field watered with soap. Well I really really really hope it is true.

Well the primary motive behind going to Oasis is for participating in the western band competition. We are performing a total of 4 songs. Others are also participating in Indian classical and other solo categories.

Even the Dance troupe of our college, Dance Coders , are coming to Pilani. The drama group is going to Kanpur. Everybody is split up. Ah, the commotion and drama.

Anyway, you should check all 4 of the songs we are performing.

Jeremy by Pearl Jam. It is about a guy named Jeremy who faces bullying. It is really a masterpiece. It is based on a real life incident. Jeremy was bullied a lot and was suppressed, and he finally speaks in front of the class by committing suicide in front of everyone. You really need to watch the video. Eddie Vedder was inspired to write this song when he read a small article about Jeremy in the local newspaper.

There is a sudden surge of Pearl Jam songs being covered in my college. What more could you want? I think every Friday Night Live has one Eddie Vedder being performed. I am really proud of DAIICT's music scene. I think I will write one post about it when I return.

Who did that to you by John Legend. This song reminds me of Jack White's cover of Love is Blindness. Ah, I just love this song. Well this song is in Django Unchained's OST.

Under the bridge by RHCP. I am sure everyone of you has heard this song.

By the sword by Slash. Well we are covering this in acoustic. More like the Myles Kennedy one and not the Stockdale one.

Band Introduction : Bastille and the story behind some of their songs

Introduction to the band Bastille, and also how it got its name. Also discusses the story behind the songs Flaws, Icarus and What would you do?


It's a band from London, first formed in 2010. It started out as a solo project by Dan Smith, who later decided to form a band. It has 4 members.

Why is the band named as Bastille?

Well, because Dan Smith's birthday comes on July 15th 14th which is the French National Day also know as the Bastille day. French revolution?

I had stumbled upon one of their songs before, but never really gave them much attention then until, I heard Flaws.

Flaws is a very beautiful synthesized song. It just has such a good feel. The voice is such emotive and innocent. And obviously the British accent always is an argument winner.

I love the tiny synthesized fillers in the song, they remind me of the music in  Mario. This song is just too innocent and peppy.

What is the story behind the song Flaws by Bastille?

Well here is an intercept from an interview, It tells what the protagonist in the song feels.

"perplexed by, and probably a bit jealous of, some people who seem so completely confident and comfortable in their own skin"
Which does make sense too. But for me and for many other Youtubers who commented on the song, the song is more about two people in a relationship. It's about how this guy is completely amazed by his girl's way of being carefree and wearing her flaws on her sleeves. He wants to be like that and learn that. It's like two opposite people completely compatible in a relationship, both on the opposite side of the spectrum and still ending up being in the middle of the rainbow. (Oh my god, that was cheesy. Pardon me.)

Anyway, the band denies any such intention in the song. Isn't it funny how songs can be interpreted so differently by different people?

" I don’t see Flaws as a relationship song at all, but pretty much everyone who has spoken to me about it has heard it that way"

Check it out on Itunes!

Another good song by the band is Icarus. Icarus from the Greek Mythology.

What does the song Icarus by Bastille mean?

Here is what the band has to say about the song,

"Icarus’ makes it difficult to believe the band are exclusively singing about a Greek Myth: “Icarus comes from things I feel about myself and other people that I know, I generally try not to write songs that seem too personal and sometimes use characters or stories to try and move the focus away from myself and from more obvious topics."

Before you listen to the song, what exactly is the Icarus reference in the song?

Well for those who have forgotten or don't know. Icarus comes from the Greek Mythology. Icarus was the son of Daedalus the architect behind the Labyrinth. Daedalus and his son both were imprisoned by the king Minos of Crete.

To escape, Daedalus comes up with idea of making fake wings attached to his arms using wax and feathers. He and his son both get these contraptions. Daedalus warns Icarus not to go too close to the sun because it would melt the wax away and result in a tragedy. But when they begin flying Icarus gets really excited and giddy about the fact and ends up flying too close to the sun. His wax melts away and he probably ends up frantically flapping his arms for a moment or two before falling down ( Unreliable cartoon source). Anyway, he ends up falling and dying and this becomes an classic example of failed ambitions also known as Hubris which also comes from the Greek Mythology .

"Hubris means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power. Hubris is usually associated with the "simple-minded"."

Source: Wikipedia.

Anyway, here is the song, it will make way more sense now. I just love the way he says the word Icarus.
Check it out on Itunes!

Another song which I really liked by them is "What would you do". 

It is a cover of a pretty famous rap by City High. It has some really nice lyrics. I don't want to spoil it but it is about this girl who ends up being a stripper because she thinks that the only thing she can do to feed her baby. She tells her story and then this guy tells her to leave the job and says there are other respectable options to earn some buck. That she is not the only one with problems. I cannot decide which side to take. What would you do?

I like the cover better than the original because its more musical in a sense and I just love the reverb in the song.

Check it out on Itunes!

Another song which you should check out is, Pompeii. 
Check it out on Itunes!

Anyway, comment what you think about the songs? Which side would you take?

Check Bastille out on Itunes!

Share this, share some good music.

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Why I Keep Getting the Writer's Block and What I am Going to Do About It Now.

Also Kitchen Utensils.

I was thinking why I have not been writing or blogging lately. Well, I had been looking at my blog completely wrong. Sorry blog :( This blog is meant to be a blog. I was treating it as my own magazine with all the longer articles, quality and themes. All the expectations of getting a really good 'article'  killed my enthusiasm and I developed a lot of inertia. I have so many partially written articles which are rotting as drafts waiting to be published into the real world but will never end up being mouthed by other lips just because I don't think they are good enough.

Expectations are stupid stupid stupid. 

 If I look back, most of the times I have stopped writing is because of this reason. Expectations from writing in the longer form. I used to have so many ideas which could have been penned but I ended up tweeting about them (shorter form with minuscule expectations) . Tweeting them gave me the false idea that I have been 'writing' and giving justice to all the ideas in my head which wanted to be penned but were cheated ultimately. False advertisement.

"Don't tweet about your next article's idea. Ever."

Blog V2. Macro Micro Blogging. 

Anyway, I have decided to treat this blog differently now. I am going to treat it like twitter just in the longer form. Macro-micro blogging. Which is um just blogging. So smart. Haha. Devolution.

So I am just going to blog anything that comes to my mind. Anything that happens in my day. Just about anything. No expectations. Just writing whatever catches my mind's fancy. Anything random. There is an ant walking over the banana resting on my desk. Probably feeling very proud.

So, yes.
I won't give a fuck about expectations. The length can be any. I will just write anything. Not falling for this trap again. Hopefully. No expectations, no disappointments. I just want to keep writing, it makes me happy. I don't want any kinds of inertia. Just free flowing writing.

The power of one-click publish on the internet gets demeaned if it takes so much courage to do it. It's supposed to give me a voice and I am reclaiming it :)

Stop being an idiot before your exams!

How all of us behave like complete idiots before our exams.

Pre-Examination Rant:

Second in-semester exams start day after tomorrow. We've got Algorithms and Database Managements systems on the first day. I can count the number of lectures of DBMS I have attended on the fingers of my hands, one hand, even if I were suffering from Oligodactyly . I really find it uninspiring and have sympathies for the person who has to handle databases when he graduates. I don't want to be that person.

Its too much theory and blah blah. I am probably wrong and am sure DBMS is a very important subject, but I just don't get inspired by it. I have to start studying it. Probably after this post.


I had a lot of tiny epiphanies today, Um usual pre-examination behavior. Even the beginning of this blog was through one of these mini epiphanies.

Anyway,
I hate something about examinations a lot. No, not about the system or anything. It's about how most of us behave in the few days before exams.

We dedicate few days before examination to studying. Just studying. It may be ten days for few or a maybe a week. These days suck. It's like the only thing that you think you are supposed to do in these few days is to study. And if you are not studying you better be sleeping or eating.

If I look at my complete day in which I was supposedly studying and denying myself of any recreation, I hardly studied. Then what did I do? Nada. Void. Nothing. Neither is my studying proportional to the time I invest in it nor do I permit myself in doing anything else. If I want to take a break, I take a nap. Wake up in cold sweat and rush back to my desk to make up for the extended sleep.

This is completely stupid. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

Shouldn't I just study properly for some part of the day and do something else in the remaining. No. Rather take the small amount of learning and distribute it throughout the day so in the end half of it doesn't make sense and there is hardly any retention. Argh. Who are you trying to fool?! You are just being stupid! You keep checking your Facebook, Twitter, Webmail and Gmail. You keep cycling through them. You read random articles. You strike up a conversation with friends you've not talked to in a long time.

Hey!
Long time!? How have you been?!

And then you don't even look for a reply. You don't give a fuck. You are busy reading comments on Feline videos on Youtube. You think how can everyone be so easily distracted? Oh and in between all this you read a line or two. Pretend you are studying. You are just killing time and waiting for the day to end. Waiting for the exams to end.

Dude, I spent the whole day studying! The course is just too large!

Can we just be a little smart and not waste 10 or 7 days before every exam pretending?! We anyway pretend a lot in our lives. Leave this out please. Don't pretend to study just because everybody is studying the whole day! It is not sacrilegious to do something else than studying before exams. There is no police.

Don't be a sheep!

Source:  Fluent in Spanish

But it is really funny, how I am so touchy and feeling so much about productivity just right before my examinations. Because after it ends, I'll turn a deaf ear to all such pleas in my stupid head. I'll be completely vella. I'll be in the state of doing nothing at all and wasting time till the dates for the next examination are announced.

"Vellapanti is a series of endless actions having the sole aim to kill time and doing chutiyapa at the same time"
Source: UrbanDictionary

True. We miss something when it's denied.

On an unrelated note. Only know you love her when you Let Her Go. Awesome song. Check it out. One of my favorite voices! The band is called Passenger.

 

PS. I have been tampering with the blog layout throughout the day and finally decided upon the sidebar thingy, which you see on the side. Duh. Tell me what you think of it? Please? I just can't decide.

Also please subscribe and comment :) Hover to the right of the screen. 

Everybody is not subscribing. Don't be a sheep.

How college students took group study to a whole new level !

Students of Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT) took group study to an entire new level during one of their recent in semester examinations.

Students were given a random set of questions by the professor and were supposed to find their answers and treat them as the syllabus of the upcoming examination. Everyone was completely clueless. It was all messed up and last minute panic had already kicked in for those who gave a damn.

But necessity is the mother of Jugaad. 

One of the students made a document on Google Doc and make it public and editable by everyone. He put all the questions on it and wrote a tiny foreword telling people to fill in answers and links. All questions which were in more probability of being asked in the examination were asked to be +1'ed.

Initially the doc wasn't filled up completely but as the night before the exam began, the doc was being viewed by as many as 70 people and most of them were editing and adding answers.

It was really wonderful seeing such massive collaboration. The document was the single source of information for many of the clueless students.

There were at times when 50 people were editing at the same time and Google didn't allow any further editors on the document. But all of us could read it anyway.

But it was not that smooth and simple. There were many cases of people writing complete bull shit and going completely off topic taking advantage of their anonymity. But any crap written was removed very quickly by other more serious editors. A sense of community.

There were also instances in which people selected the whole text and deleted it and thereby sending many students in panic and giving them tiny heart attacks. These instances increased as soon dawn was breaking, and so were people's hopes about the exam. But thank god for revision history, peace was instilled quickly.

In all, its an wonderful example of who technology can be used for mass collaboration.
Everyone has the same technology, its just about how you use it and make the most of it.

A video about massive collaboration which really amused me in my freshmen year. Its an must watch for everybody. Creativity is endless.

Madonna's 4 minutes and Arduino Board.

Note: Non senti post. Just a bit technical. Yes, I am not crying and brooding all the time.

An assembled serial Arduino. (Photo by Nicholas Zambetti)

“Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock

Yeah, uh huh

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock

I only got 4 minutes to save the world”

Don’t judge me. Don't go away. This post is not about that song. Play it for added effect while reading.

World ends in 4 minutes 15 seconds.

Yes, it is the end. Everything gets over. Reset. You have to start from scratch every 4 minutes 15 seconds.

At least in Arduino world. This happened in the EHD ( Embedded Hardware Design ) lab. We were supposed to work on Arduino boards and implement a clock which displays the time. We also had to add an alarm.

The method we followed was to have a variable called seconds, which stores duh seconds. We added a delay of 1 seconds before incrementing it.

seconds = 0

delay(1000)

seconds = seconds + 1

We had to write the time every time into EEPROM so that the clock can continue even after a reset.

EEPROM.write(address, seconds)

In the start of each loop we read the seconds from the EEPROM, displayed it, added a delay, incremented, wrote in the EEPROM and continued the same cycle all over again.

The clock was working was properly our at least it seemed to. But stumbled upon something really weird though.

When the clock was running,

4 : 11

4 : 12

4 : 13

4 : 14

4 : 15

0 :  0

0 :  1

0 :  2

WHAT?! The world came crashing. Nothing made sense. Well, okay. Nothing that melodramatic.

But me and Zubin ( lab partner) were confused. There was nothing in the code that could reset the seconds to zero. Why only after 4:15? The code was simple enough to have any such hidden errors.

We tried again, and the same thing happened. We were reset to the beginning of time as soon as we hit 4:15.

But we were a little confused and then it finally hit us.

Each address on the EEPROM is byte sized and hence can only save numbers from 0 to 255. As our design solely relied on one variable (seconds) we were facing the problem.

4 : 15 means 4* 60 + 15 seconds, ie 255.

As soon as the time reached 4 : 16, it meant 256 seconds. But we couldn’t write 256 into the EEPROM, hence 0 was getting written.  Which meant the next read only fetched 0 seconds.

It was such an eureka moment for us. We were literally excited and beaming. 

We engineers, little byte sized things make us so happy.

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Twitter: @NisarHogaya